Hardware projects, working with the IFT, TKS Showcase, Switzerland and RBC
Vinaya Sharma | June Newsletter 🏔☀️
Hey! If you’re new here, I’m Vinaya and welcome to Bits and Bytes! I’m a 17 y/o emerging technology enthusiast hoping to change the world! 🚀
In this monthly newsletter, I share bits and bytes of my learnings to help you grow from my key insights! 🌱 Stay tuned for bits of self-improvement techniques, and bytes of groundbreaking tech innovations.
All I can say is June has been quite the journey, I loved it. Check it out!👇
Finishing off exams and school projects 📚
I won’t lie a significant part of early June was dedicated to studying and school projects. School definitely has its pros and cons but shoutout to Mr. C for making my computer engineering class so engaging and getting to work on some fun projects with Arduinos.
For the past couple of years, I’ve done a lot of work in computer science working with C, Python, Javascript, Solidity, Swift etc but hardware has always scared me. This month I got the opportunity to explore circuitry projects and build my own from defining the project statement to implementation.
The goal was to create something to solve an everyday problem we faced and for me, I ended up building a plant protection system named EnGarde to protect my plants from my siblings and my outdoor produce from animals.
I broke down EnGarde into 2 main components.
An invader detection system; for which I used the PIR sensor to detect motion 👾
A scaring mechanism; I built by leveraging a combination of LEDs, a motor, and a buzzer 🙀
I started by creating mockups and basic schematics, calculating resistor values and simulating the circuit on Tinkercad. After finalizing the circuit and code I collected materials and got to the build. Yes as expected there were many bugs and errors I had to overcome during the build like libraries not importing, having to adjust PIR sensor knobs, debugging forever to realize things weren’t working because the battery was low etc, but in the end, it was all worth it when Engaude came together and completed its mission!
Working with The Institute of Food Technologist 👩🔬
Back in May, I met some incredible people while speaking at C2 Montreal. I joined a ton of different brain dates with one specifically titled “The Ethics Of AI: Robot Utopia or Terminator Nightmare?”. There were 5 others with various backgrounds in tech and innovation and we had an amazing debate on the possibilities and ethics of AI.
While advocating pro-AI and sharing a little about my various projects and builds and how they have made a significant impact I ended up developing some great relationships with one snowballing into an amazing friendship and partnership with the IFT Senior Director of Digital Experiences.
This past month I’ve now been working hard to design and develop an application to be used at their upcoming conference to help bring people together!
The Knowledge Society Showcase 🥳
As my Innovate year comes to an end, I had the honour of presenting one of my favourite projects Triage.AI at the TKS end-of-the-year showcase at The Microsoft HQ in Toronto. You can watch the keynote here and check out the portfolio of projects I've built these past 10 months ranging from consulting for Walmart and Amazon to fixing our broken energy system here. I also had the honour of leading a fireside chat with Klaas Knieriem the General Manager of New Verticals at Uber Canada during the showcase. We talked about Uber New Verticals, the fear of failure, exploration, management, and life and success. Check out the fireside chat here.
The truth is although TKS is technically over for the summer and won’t start back up for Activate (the second-year program) until September - It feels like barely anything has changed. TKS is less of a program to me and more like a way of living where you're always learning, growing, and pushing yourself.
Yes, I think I’ve grown and achieved a lot this year by speaking at and attending conferences in Toronto, Montreal, Texas, and Switzerland, shipping more than 5 AI projects, winning competitions and scholarships, getting internships and contract projects, developing strong mentor relationships, and meeting an amazing community of ambitious youth.
However, I think my biggest takeaway from this year that I subconsciously think about all the time now is “get comfortable being uncomfortable”. Whether that’s pushing yourself while on a run, taking cold showers, speaking up, posting content, speaking at conferences, networking etc you’re only going to grow when you do hard things and I think that’s my biggest achievement this year - getting just a little more comfortable with the discomfort.
Thank you to everyone at TKS that made this year so amazing and for putting together an amazing showcase. It was great getting to show my family behind the scenes what goes on and what TKS looks like.
Attending the Global Learning Council and Villars Symposium in Switzerland 🏔🇨🇭
It’s been a week since I returned from some of the most transformative days of my life in Villars Switzerland. The Villars Institute is all about systematic change, emerging tech, and climate impact and after these days filled with workshops, discussions, long dinner convos, and networking with some of the most influential people in the world, I’m left inspired and motivated in ways that are so hard to put into words.
I learnt so much from the people that I was surrounded by and opened up some doors that I never knew existed. I wrote up a little bit on my LinkedIn about some specific people that left a major impact but here are some more major takeaways.
The importance of travel and exploration. Every other person I spoke to had spent a significant portion of their time just travelling to understand the world and how it works. Truth is I’ve never thought of taking time off to travel but it’s from hearing stories like Marco Dunand’s where he went from a year of backpacking to then starting a multibillion-dollar energy trading company that made me realize travel holds a lot of value and loads of beneficial learnings. Later in a conversation with Robert Swan, he stressed to me that you shouldn’t even say “time off” for travel because it’s through those unique experiences that you actually grow the most.
No level of impact is unattainable. Villars was packed with some of the most influential people in the world, and by speaking with them I realized just how diverse their backgrounds were. Peter started off in a refugee camp and is now a rocket scientist. Andy worked at night to save for college, was the first member of his family to graduate from a four-year institution and is now a technology entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and energy and environmental policymaker. We seem to limit ourselves and box off what is possible when in reality we really can achieve a lot as long as we stop putting ourselves on autopilot, following the crowd and subconsciously going about life.
Be intentional with your time and projects. This point kind of merges the first two by taking the ideas of exploration and life on autopilot into consideration as well as Peter’s moto ABH; always be happy. On the last night before my flight, I was speaking with Thijs. He told me there’s one thing that he believes led to most of his success - he only does fun things. It sounds obvious but most of us get blinded by mimetic desires for money, and status and almost convince ourselves we enjoy the things that we actually don’t. The truth is life is a marathon, not a sprint and the only way to be committed long-term whether that be to a project, company, relationship etc is if we truly enjoy it and the journey and not only for the title/results. One thing bothered me though - “Fun things” almost always get labelled as having less impact, but Thijs proved this wrong too. He’s an Ecological artist using climate data to create art installations, and he is changing the world through art.
I promised Thijs my next projects will involve a lot more exploration since I have the most fun just building random things and learning what’s possible. I have a couple of things on my plate this summer but I’m going to try my best to follow through with this goal of shipping, building, or learning in public each week to make sure I continue growing.
Beginning my internship as an Innovation Developer at RBC Summer Tech Labs 👩💻
It’s only been a couple of days into my internship but my mind is already blown. We kickstarted with a conversation with Bruce Ross Head of T&O at RBC to learn about current initiatives being led and future innovations they are currently working on and launching. I was surprised to hear about all of the ways AI and blockchain is already being used internally and externally at the company, and I now understand that banks like RBC are actually tech companies masked as banks.
One of the coolest initiatives I learnt about is Borealis AI, a research center that focuses on machine learning and AI development, with a particular emphasis on transforming RBC businesses and shaping the future of finance. Some specific products developed by Borealis AI that really caught my interest were
Aiden - A RL agent applied to electronic trading for capital markets
NOMI Forecast - An AI for digital money management for personal finance
I’m excited to learn more about how tech is being applied to shape the future of finance and get my hands dirty by working on these products.
I’m specifically working on the Open Source Program Office team and once again I’m quite surprised by the number of open source initiatives RBC is leading and how they are giving back to the community. The RBC Developer Portal was one such product that I read a lot into where anyone can access and easily integrate RBC API’s into their business. RBC was the first Canadian bank to open an API developer portal and there are many more interesting inner source projects like this being worked on as well.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be working on a mix of open source, inner source, and developer advocacy tools growing both my professional and technical skills.
Closing thoughts and what’s next?
Now that school is out, I’ll be focusing most of my time at
RBC - making the most of my internship 🏦
I’m working on 2 contract projects on the side, one very exciting new one which you’ll learn more about next month 🤖
Weekly Twitter builds and knowledge nuggets 💭
A couple of networking events 🪅
That’s it for now, see you next month!
You did so amazing at showcase Vinaya!! Congrats on all of your amazing accomplishments this month :))
Loved this! Super excited for activate :) Congrats on the RBC internship👏🏻